Fishmeal is a huge industry, with over 5 million tons produced each year.

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Fish meal is a commercial, protein-rich product created from raw fish and their byproducts, such as the heads and bones. It tends to be made from smaller fish species, including anchovies, sardines and herring. The fish are cooked, dried and ground into a powder, and then used to feed livestock, farmed fish and pets. But it is not a straightforward market.

In this excerpt from " Every Last Fish: A Deep Dive into the World of Fishes and Fishing " (Granta Books, 2025), journalist and author Rose George looks at how vast quantities of staple fish are taken from the sea off West Africa and turned into fishmeal for farming in Europe and China , instead of ending up on the plates of people in Africa.

Rose George is a British journalist and author. She has been a postwar correspondent, a writer of reportage, and a regular book reviewer. She has written four non-fiction books.…